The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
by Judy Rodgers
(W. W. Norton)

Perhaps more valuable than anything else in Judy Rodgers’s impressiveZuni Café Cookbookis the wisdom of her detailed writings, present in recipes from a simple crostini to an elaborate multi-step braise or roast. Rodgers’s understated sensibilities, borne of many years of cooking, illuminate the book’s creative compositions and leave the reader with not just a great set of recipes, but with an education, too. Though only a handful of ingredients are needed to make Zuni’s signature dish, a roast chicken with bread salad, Rodgers takes five pages to explain the little tricks that make her restaurant version so noteworthy. All our other tests—including a Salad of Bosc Pears with Fennel, Walnuts & Parmigiano and a Monkfish Braise with White Beans, Fennel & Tomato—were delicious and reinforced our admiration for this thoughtful 547-page book.